Patron saint of the Internet smiles on Boston College data center

St. Isidore, the patron saint of the Internet, now overlooks the new Boston …

Boston College recently relocated its data center into an old seminary dormitory formerly owned by the Catholic Church. This would hardly be news, except for the fact that the data center's new digs contain a stained-glass window of St. Isidore, the patron saint of the Internet. The Boston Globe, which reported the story, notes that it was a coincidence—16 saints appear in the dormitory windows, where they have held their holy vigil for many years.

What's most interesting about the story is the simple fact that the Internet even has a patron saint, who no doubt has his work cut out for him dealing with pornography, spam, Nigerian 419 scams, and Paris Hilton photos. Isidore was born into a Spanish family in 560 AD, and after growing up and joining the priesthood, began to compile the Wikipedia of his time in the 600's.

Isidore's twenty-volume Etymologies was an encyclopedic account of human knowledge, and the Wikipedia comparison is an apt one. Peter Jones, reviewing a new English translation of the Etymologies in the Telegraph, notes that "it was lifted from sources almost entirely at second or third hand (the Romans had been writing encyclopedias since the 2nd century BC), none of it checked, and much of it [was] unconditional eyewash—the internet, in other words, to a T."

Still, Isidore tried, and his attempt to catalogue human knowledge helped his nomination to become the patron saint of the Internet. The Vatican actually has quite an interest in the Internet; beside approving St. Isidore, their Pontifical Council for Social Communications has also issued documents about Internet ethics and sent a representative to last year's WSIS meeting in Tunis.

Netizens who want to invoke the guidance of St. Isidore before setting out on their surfboards might say the follow prayer: "Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thy image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant we beseech Thee that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor, during our journeys through the Internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen." (For a more humorous prayer to St. Isidore, see what one Episcopal came up with.)